Robert Reynolds: 504 books

In 1912 gambler Herman M. Rosenthal was a desperate man. His business was in decline and he turned to telling reporters what he knew about a police protection racket involving New York Police Department Lieutenant Charles Becker. In fact Becker was the head of a criminal organization designed to help...

My e-book presents a sampling of documented cases in which photographers and marketers of photos, films and magazines were subjected to trials, fines and imprisonment. Most are from the 1950s. The Brooke Shields-Gary Gross trial of 1981 dealt with a photographer's use of photos that were made...

George Cvek was a congenial drifter and hitchhiker who roamed up and down US Highway 1 from Maine to Washington until he was apprehended in March 1941. Cvek attacked, raped and strangled at least 14 women and perhaps more than 30. A native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania George Joseph Cvek was the son...

Joseph Paterra criminal life was intimately tied to the career of Joseph "Joie" Aloe. The latter gangster virtually controlled inmate life in the notorious Welfare Island (Roosevelt Island) Prison of the early 1930s. Aloe and Joe Sweets made headline in 1932 with their assault of a New York...

Charles Albero was in trouble for truancy by the time he was nine years old. He was sent to the Elmira Reformatory in the 1920s. His first active prison sentence occurred in 1929. Albero was in a Lucky Luciano inspired multinational drug ring that operated from 1941-1945. Broken up in '45 the ring's...

Meyer Shapiro and his brothers, Irving and Willy, were tutored by Irish American hoodlum Legs Diamond. Aside from Willie Shapiro all of them died the same year, 1931. Diamond was gunned down in Albany in December. Meyer was found dead in a Lower East Side tenement with a single bullet wound in his...

Verne Sankey had a job as a railroad engineer in Canada before he became a bootlegger and then a kidnapper. Born in Pottawatamie County, Iowa, Sankey lived in South Dakota. Later he maintained a hideout near Mitchell, SD where he kept one of his captives away from the law. Sankey was caught in Chicago...

Jimmy Hoffa was tried in Nashville, Tennessee in December 1962. Hoffa was indicted for violating the Taft-Hartley Act when after he took money from a Detroit transportation in return for settling a labor dispute. Before this case the Teamsters boss had beaten federal government raps on three successive...

The fire at the Park Avenue studios of Pathe' film company snuffed out the lives of ten persons. Nineteen others were injured in a disaster that might have been prevented had the building been equipped with an adequate sprinkler system. Following the tragedy a grand jury inquest revealed that...

Eduardo Aronica was part of the Carlo Gambino crime organization in New York City. Aronica got his start in illicit, untaxed, unregistered liquor stills. Stills operated by Eduardo and his cronies were discovered by government agents during sweeps conducted in 1938 and 1939. Aronica was prosecuted...

John "Sonny" Franzese was a rising star in the Profaci-Magliocco/Colombo family crime organization. Born in Naples, Sonny was raised by his bakery owner father in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. By 1965 he was the fastest ascending Cosa Nostra leader in the underworld. A Newsday article...

Angelo Amico was a significant organized crime boss in Rochester and western New York during the mid 20th century and after. One newspaper article described him as part of the "new leadership" among mobsters. In one of his trials he was indicted for extorting gambling revenue from sixteen...

John "Poppa John" Priziola was a lynchpin Mafioso in the annals of Detroit, Michigan crime. He was notorious as a receiver of narcotics for a heroin smuggling syndicate that thrived in the mid twentieth century. His crimes and illicit activities were a focus of the McClellan U.S. Senate...

Andy Warhol was shot by a radical feminist at the studio he regularly called The Factory. Near Union Square the date was June 3, 1968. Warhol was busy opening his mail when the woman walked in dressed in a trench coat. She had a loaded weapon in one of its pockets. As usual the place was bustling...